It is in meditation and reflection, dreams and imagination, where we make creative discoveries. We are most human when we are bored. To be bored is to stop reacting to the external world and to explore the internal one. We may emerge from boredom feeling we have accomplished nothing, but consider, boredom is often occupied by revery, and it is in revery that we have our deepest insights. Boredom is the essential human emotion underlying art, literature, philosophy, science, psychology, even love. Boredom engages the imagination; it is a doorway to that which underpins emotions. Feeling bored has a purpose. The most creative people have the greatest tolerance for long periods of boredom. Creative people strive to communicate that which seemingly cannot be communicated - truth, beauty, meaning. Feeling bored actually brings us back to basics, to levels of knowing ourselves, and to understanding our internal connections to "meaning" and "being."
(Image is Paul Cezanne's "The Smoker.")